


Forgive Me, Father, For My Sins

by Lucigoosey_The_Lightbringer



Series: Monster You Made Me [2]
Category: House M.D.
Genre: Aftermath of Murder, Angst, Blood, Bulimia, Chase forces himself to throw up, Cutting, Ficlet, Gen, Guilt, Hallucinations, Hurt Robert Chase, Implied/Referenced Murder, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Insanity, One Shot, PTSD, Robert Chase Has PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Self-Harm, kind of, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27020629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucigoosey_The_Lightbringer/pseuds/Lucigoosey_The_Lightbringer
Summary: He feels guilty over everything. Every little thing he does.
Series: Monster You Made Me [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974880
Comments: 7
Kudos: 27





	Forgive Me, Father, For My Sins

Guilt.

Robert Chase is full of it.

There's so much of it he could drown, suffocate, choke. Sometimes he feels like he just might. Those are the days he's bent over the toilet, forcing himself to throw up whatever he'd eaten for lunch that day. The guilt drives him mad, makes his head whirl, makes his chest tighten, throat constrict. But the worst thing is the way it makes his stomach flip and churn to a nauseating degree, until the only thing that can relieve him is finding the nearest bathroom to escape to. He never feels much relief emotionally after the deed is done - he almost feels even guiltier for having to do it in the first place - but he feels better physically, the nausea settling to a tolerable degree once again, and so he wipes his mouth and pops a breath mint and goes about his day.

He feels guilty over everything. Every little thing he does. He comes into work late one day, later than usual, at exactly 7:01, one minute later than usual. It's earlier than Cameron and Foreman usually arrive, and definitely earlier than House does. But the only thing that soothes him about that is the fact that it gives him a chance to empty out the breakfast he had. There's no other way.

When Cameron calls him, high on crystal meth, he sleeps with her. And he feels guilty over that too. He throws up the second he gets home, and feels even worse for it. He shows up late again.

He feels guilty for things that aren't his fault. He feels guilty when someone he doesn't know explains that a loved one has just passed. He feels guilty for the few patients he can't save. He feels guilty over that baby, that damn _baby_ that died over choices he made, treatments he gave. He curls himself into a corner of the room for the rest of the day, knowing House would kill him if he disappears. But the moment he steps into his house and reaches his bathroom, he can't pull himself off of the floor for the rest of the night. He sits there with his head against the wall until morning comes, and puking doesn't free him of the nausea rolling through him like thunder.

There's so many things, too many things he feels guilt for. He can't list them. He lost count.

He meets Dibala. Grows to like the man at first. Then he hears the stories, sees the pain and fear and anger in the other man's eyes as he explains the things Dibala made him do. His head whirls with thoughts he knows he shouldn't have, and he confronts Cameron over expressing her own anger toward Dibala by basically declaring she wants him dead. In a way, it's like confronting himself for his own feelings toward the man. He reaches his conclusion in the end.

Dibala flatlines and Chase's reaction is as genuine as it can come. Not the shock, but the fear. Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital loses a patient that day. The world loses a tyrant.

The guilt drives him insane. He can't control the puking anymore; he's rushing to the bathroom ten times a day, losing it, making up excuses for his disappearances. He tries everything, going to church and confessing his sins and asking for forgiveness. He prays every night, curled up beside Cameron, stifling his sobs with his pillow. He's going to Hell. He knows he's going to Hell.

"You think you can kill another human being without any consequences to yourself?" Foreman asks him incredulously, only a few hours after the deed is done. Chase wants to scream.

"No," is all he says, barely above a whisper.

He's always been guilty. He's always felt like this. 

He knows why.

He knows there's consequences.

He's lived with those consequences for _years._ This changes nothing, and yet everything at the same time.

 _It's justified,_ _I did what I had to do,_ he tries to tell himself, as he did back then. It doesn't work.

He hallucinates. At home, alone, pacing the length of the bathroom. There's blood on his hands, dripping from his fingers onto the tiled floor. He sees Dibala's face in the mirror. Hears his voice every night. He can't stop throwing up, even though it never helps, it never stops, never ends. He drives himself crazy day and night with the pain and the torment and the guilt and the nausea. And he gets drunk, he drinks like he remembers his mother used to, he drinks and drinks and drinks until everything is numb. Not numb enough to make the nausea go away, but numb enough for him to stumble home late at night one day and fall into Cameron's arms and tell her what he'd done. He tells her he killed a man. He tells her what he did, why he did it.

He sleeps on the couch, though she tries to invite him back to their bed. He can't look at her.

So many things happen after that, but it's all a blur. He remembers her saying they can get through this together, that she still loves him, that she's okay with what he did. And then everything's a blur up until the point where she leaves, because he doesn't want to leave. Because as guilty as he is, he doesn't want to run away. He doesn't want to ignore what he did. He knows he can never ignore what he did - in a way, he wants to feel guilty. He deserves to.

She leaves, and he breaks.

He alternates between sleeping in the bathroom and sleeping in his bed with a new girl every other night. He gets drunk until he _has_ to throw up, because it's a better alternative than sticking his finger down his throat. He doesn't try to pretend he's okay, not alone, because he's not. At work, it doesn't matter. He silences everyone's concern by punching House in the face - and he leaves immediately after he does so to throw up again, because as much of an asshole as House can be, he knows full well that he didn't deserve that punch in the face. Chase was just using him as an excuse to make it clear that he wasn't going to entertain anyone else's concern.

He curls up in the bathroom one night, listens to the clock ticking minutes away, and looks down at the blood on his hands. It runs down his palms, staining his fingernails, dripping to the floor.

It's real. He knows because he has to clean it up in the morning after he passes out from the alcohol and probably the blood loss to boot. He knows because he has to clean the cuts on his wrist, dabbing at them lightly and bandaging them up and making sure the sleeves of his lab coat cover them completely before he goes to work. He won't be performing surgery today.

Guilt haunts him. Sticks to him. Feeds off of him. It's his own worst enemy, and he knows it. Chase stops fighting. His emotions prove to him time and time again who's really the boss.

He deals with it. Lives with it.

Living in misery sucks marginally less than dying in it.

He doesn't want to die.

He doesn't want to go to Hell. He's not ready.

Not yet.


End file.
